Writing opportunities for the yoof

31 August 2011

This post is for all the lovely, enthusiastic students out there who have asked me in the last couple of weeks: but WHERE can I send my writing? I remember that feeling well. I used to laboriously keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the competitions and submissions I knew of, but it required a lot of trawling to find that information. And I was never sure if I was missing out on things.

Today I heard about a very easy way for young writers to find out about writing opportunities (thanks Lili Wilkinson!). Here’s what you do: go to the Inside A Dog website, then type in `Wordbox’ in the Search Inside A Dog box. Voila! You will instantly see all the blog posts that relate to competitions, prizes, and publications for young writers. Nifty, huh?

Sending out work for the first time can be very, very scary. You’re exposing yourself to rejection after all. But it will motivate you to finish and polish your writing. Sometimes I feel a great sense of achievement from the simple act of submitting a story (it used to be the moment I pushed that envelope into the postbox, now it’s more likely to be hitting `Send’), never mind whether it gets accepted or not! By sending your writing out into the world, you’re acknowledging that you have something of value to say, that you take writing seriously, and that you think it’s a worthwhile pursuit. Off you go, then.